Arthur Invictus

by Paul Bannister

  Now we were just 12 strong, desperately booting our tiring ponies through the snow and headed directly for the coast. Our sole hope was to outrun the twin columns of pursuers and to seize a ship. The hope was forlorn and I tasted the bitterness of defeat when I saw a third group of horsemen trotting along the coast road that crossed our path, a mile or more ahead.

  Our last chance seemed to be to make a stand and attempt a parley. Ahead was a rocky promontory dark against the snow, right on the moors above the beach and we made a last, despairing spurt to reach it before the Romans did. We arrived in a shower of arrows that killed several ponies and sent a few more scattering, squealing and injured, but not one of our group was wounded.

  The rocky outcrop was promising, rising steeply on three sides to provide cover against any attacks from the north, or coastal side, but had a tongue of land bridging it to the moor in the south. I killed three ponies myself, dropping them as carcasses where they stood on that land bridge. They would provide a modicum of shelter from archers, and I offered the sacrifice to Odin and to Mithras, asking for the help of them both.

  A swift assessment of our situation was not reassuring. Two soldiers had Scythian bows they had obtained from the Huns as trophies, but they had a very limited supply of arrows. Because we had travelled light on our shipyard raid, burdened as we then were with fire-making materials and other equipment, most of us had only swords and daggers, but no spears or throwing darts and only several javelins.

  Our best weapon was in the hands of a Sarmatian called Chubio. He had once been a shepherd and could kill a wolf at a hundred paces with one of the lethal pigeon-egg-sized lead bullets he fired from his deadly sling, but had only a half dozen of that ammunition at this time. “I can fire rocks, boss,” he grinned. “I can send them 300 paces if they’re the right shape.” Two of his comrades began at once to gather suitable stones for him.

  The sky was still dull and threatening and I judged it to be about the eighth hour, or two hours past midday. Darkness was still several hours away, even in this winter gloom. If we could hold off the Romans long enough, maybe we could slip away after dark. A glance over the parapet we were busy raising from the rocky rubble showed their commanders were efficient. They had already effectively surrounded us, keeping discreetly out of range, and were gathering a force on the moor to our south, where I sourly expected they would launch their main attack.

  Before that happened, I hoped they would send someone to parley. I could delay matters and bring us closer to dark without conflict. They didn’t bother. A spatter of arrows fell into our stone redoubt and I raised my head to see 20 or so legionaries trotting towards the small land bridge, shields up, the red-cloaked officer at their head.

  “Nail that Rupert,” I snarled at Chubio. He stood, whirred his sling and released the deadly leaden egg at 40 yards’ range. It could not have been a better shot. It struck the officer square on the brow of his helmet, killing the man outright and dropping him like a beast under a poled axe.

  Our two archers were a Catuvellaunian Briton called Malnic and a skinny eastern Alan tribesman we had recruited from the Huns and who had aroused envy and disbelief among us when he claimed to have fathered 17 children. At a nod, both released their feathered missiles. At that range, they could hardly miss.

  The centurion who was half-turned, bellowing to his shaken legionaries to continue forward took an arrow under the jaw and pitched onto his face, his blood steaming as it turned the snow crimson. A soldier who was brandishing his spear and exhorting his comrades was fatally pierced in his left armpit by a bodkin-pointed shaft that sank an arm’s span deep, right through his body. He too went down in a welter of slush and blood.

  Chubio released a second leaden missile that shattered the shinbone of an infantryman despite the iron greave he was wearing over it. He collapsed, howling, and the whole attack sputtered to a halt. Two more arrows that inflicted minor wounds turned the rest of the advancing line into a rabble who retreated, shouting defiance.

  “Garrison troops,” said Chubio contemptuously. “Good for sentry-go, useless in a scrap.” I wasn’t so sure. We had benefitted from surprise on their first, hasty advance. Now, I could see a mounted officer leaning down to speak to three helmeted legionaries who even at a distance had the stamp of experience about them. As I watched the trio broke up, separated across the snowy moor and began marshalling their squads. The next advance, I supposed would be in testudo – the armoured shell of raised shields that protected Roman infantry like the turtle for which the tactic was named.

  A dozen lightly-armed men fighting from behind a low parapet of rocks should hardly pose a problem to such a disciplined, armoured advance. I was right. The tortoise came inexorably over the parapet onto our blades and inevitably, we lost.

  The fight was short, violent and bloody. At the end of it, the Alan with 17 children had left a widow and 17 orphans, young Aureus was coughing blood into the snow as his life ebbed away and two of our infantrymen whose names I never knew were dead and being stripped of their equipment.

  I had suffered some battering wounds and could only see out of one blood-crusted eye, but I had taken two Roman lives with Exalter, which fine blade was now in the possession of the mounted officer. The slinger Chubio was folded up on the snow after taking a savage beating. His deadly bullets had claimed three more Roman lives, and their comrades wanted revenge, but were shortly called off by a hard-faced centurion whose helmet sported a green horsehair plume.

  Before dusk, we were shuffling and limping through the frozen slush, hands tied, roped by our necks to the tails of the surviving Hun ponies. Our new masters, who told us they were taking us to Bononia, took every opportunity to goad us on with sword or spear point, vengeful because we had cost too many lives and we did not carry enough plunder to placate them. If Maximian had not issued specific orders about us being delivered alive, we would have been slaughtered where we stood on that snowy moor. But the emperor wanted us, wanted me at least, intact for his pleasure. I did not relish the thought. Nor did I relish returning to my former stronghold as a captive, and a doomed one at that.

  Chapter XVI - Captive

  Bad news travels fast. Guinevia and the tribunes Grabelius, Quirinus and Grimr soon knew that Arthur and part of his troop were imprisoned in Bononia, and had met in Dover for a council of war. Grabelius, as cavalry commander, was by Arthur’s orders acting as proconsul and was in charge of the army during the imperator’s absence. “He should never have led that expedition,” he said bitterly.

  “He had to; he had to meet the Celts and Huns face to face to persuade them into an alliance,” Guinevia pointed out gently.

  “We have to rescue him,” said Grimr. “It’s a naval operation. He’s in Bononia because it’s a port, and Maximian will want Arthur brought before him as quickly as possible. He’ll transport him by sea and maybe river. We can intercept their ships.”

  Quirinus disagreed. “The minute they think they’re in danger of losing him to you, Arthur will be thrown over the side,” he said. “Maximian won’t let him live to fight again.”

  “We can’t storm the place, we couldn’t get enough force there in time,” said Grabelius. “The prisoners will be moved on in a matter of days. We could try to slip in a small group, or we could hope to surprise the ships that take them to Maximian, maybe ambush them from a fishing boat?”

  “Perhaps,” said Guinevia, “we could sabotage their ships so they have to take him by land? That way, we might have a better chance at an ambush, especially if we get help from our new allies in Belgica?”

  Whatever course they chose, the council decided they needed to have someone in Gaul, in Bononia and in a likely landing place, maybe Forum Hadriani, and in the shortest possible time at that. Grimr left to organise two warships and get them across the straits with picked crews of marines. Grabelius sent word of Arthur’s situation to the newly-allied kings, and to spies in Gaul and Belgica, using the carrier pigeons that had been sent t
o coordinate war preparations. “Will messenger birds do the job?” Quirinus asked.

  “They were good enough for Gaius Julius Caesar centuries ago, they’ll do for us,” said Grabelius grimly.

  Guinevia excused herself and went to her viewing chamber, to psychically send out her mind and see what she could discover, and to commune with her gods, especially with Ogmia, lord of letters and dangerous words.

  She took a piece of papyrus, pricked her finger with an awl and squeezed out a blot of blood. Dipping her split-reed pen carefully into it, she inscribed the acronym that represented the secret oath of Ogmia’s sect, then carefully set fire to the papyrus and dropped the ashes into a small saucer. Using her thumb in a circular motion that she was careful to move sunwise so as not to defy the order the gods decreed, she ground the ashes to grit, then scattered it onto a small piece of clean linen to see what pattern it formed.

  The image seemed clear: four vertical lines, the second and third interrupted and shortened. “Prison bars,” the druid said aloud. “Broken prison bars. My Caros will escape!” She turned to her obsidian viewing block, a smooth brick of black volcanic glass like her sorcerer mentor Myrddin’s. Closing her mind to the outside world, she sank into its hazy depths and there clearly saw Arthur, bruised, one eye swollen shut, the other blood-encrusted, sitting against a stone wall. Around his neck was a slave collar.

  The scene shifted and Guinevia had a seagull’s view of the Gallic coast and the familiar walls of Bononia, where she and Arthur, then called Carausius, had first made love. The memory caught at her throat. That, she knew, was where he was incarcerated, and was the place from which he would escape. She hurried from the chamber. She wanted to get word to Grimr and the other tribunes to have ships waiting…

  Chapter XVII - Cesti

  My damaged eye was a nuisance and had kept me awake, but that wakefulness had been useful. I was locked alone in a freezing cell in the older, western tower of Bononia’s keep, a tower I knew well enough as the citadel had once been mine. The Romans, who actually were auxiliaries from Dacia, had fine sport with us before they pushed us into our cells and had handed out beatings with spear hafts.

  Although I was bound, my hands were before me, and I had grabbed one bastard’s spear shaft and head-butted him unconscious, which earned me some extra attentions and I woke up to find myself in a slave collar that was chained to the wall. Between the bruises and my painfully-throbbing eye, I’d lain awake and had heard a useful exchange between two sentries when they changed the guard around midnight.

  The gist of it was that we were to be shipped to the Rhine to Maximian’s oppidum. Seemingly, he was still busily engaged with the Alemanni despite the lateness of the year. We would be taken by ship as the snowstorms in northern Gaul had made land travel difficult, and we were waiting for a couple of suitably stout vessels to arrive from the river Scheldt.

  The other nugget of information was more useful. The guard I had head-butted was notoriously quick-tempered and had vowed to his comrades that he would take something out of my hide, emperor’s orders or not. I remembered that he was a big man, as big or bigger than myself, and he must have been shamed that a bound prisoner had floored him. There might be a possibility here, I mused, and for the first time in days I found myself smiling. I had an idea.

  Years before, as a teenage legionary, I had trained at Carnutum, a military outpost on the amber trade route where it crossed the Danube.

  The Apollonian XV Legion was garrisoned there and the settlement housed a gladiator complex that was part prison and part training barracks for arena fighters. Our tribune’s name, Cevius Paulus, came to me across the years so clearly that I had the image of his heavily-scarred eyebrows. He had unusual ideas about fighting and sent us infantrymen for extra tuition from the gladiator trainers.

  “You’ll learn hand to hand tactics that will not be found in the military manuals, but they could save your lives,” he told us young soldiers as we listened, usually open-mouthed. “You don’t go in to fight fair,” the instructors beat into us. “You go in to leave the other fellow on the ground, bleeding and unconscious. If you know your way around a fight, you’ll be calm, and that will let you move better and be more deadly.”

  The instructors spelled it out: “Most of the enemies you’ll face will be undisciplined barbarians crazed on mushrooms or mead. If you are collected and calm, you’ll have the advantage. The difference for you over the gladiators is that you should survive your army years because you’ll usually fight inferior foes. Gladiators won’t, they’ll face men trained like themselves. That’s why they are allowed to retire from the arena as free men after six years or 30 bouts – because very few survive that long. Most die on the sand after six bouts or even fewer.”

  The message got to me clear and loud. I liked the idea of surviving when others did not, I liked the idea of earning booty and a piece of land for my time in the legions. So I paid attention.

  The instructors trained us with extra-heavy weapons. It built muscle and when we fought using a sword of regular weight we wielded it faster and easier. In most combat, I had the advantage of size and my time on the frontier, in skirmish after skirmish, had made me experienced. Against a big-mouthed Dacian who knew so little of street fighting that he’d allowed a bound prisoner to stun him cold, I should have a huge advantage, despite being temporarily one-eyed. After all, I faced only one foe.

  My chance came the very next day. We prisoners had all been paraded out into a small courtyard on the west side of the citadel to use the latrines and the big Dacian was waiting for me. I evaded the spear butt he thrust to trip me and deliberately spat at his feet. He snarled and lunged to cuff me, but I blocked the blow with my forearm.

  “You’re pretty brave to take on a bound man,” I jeered at him. “How do you fancy your chances one on one, properly?” He had no choice. A squad of his comrades were around him, I was a prisoner he’d boasted he would thrash, and I must have looked a sorry sight, battered and blood-crusted.

  “I’ll crush you, Briton,” he growled. “You’re cooked.”

  An officer heard the remarks. “No weapons,” he said curtly. “The prisoner is to survive.” I glanced at him, young, with an aristocratic accent.

  The Dacian, whose name I later found was Brandarke, grunted. “Battle gloves, then,” he said. It was a good choice. Cesti were leather gloves, sometimes reinforced with metal that were used for non-lethal fist fighting. They were made of leather strips that wrapped around the fists, wrists and forearms.

  Some variants had blades or spikes that protruded to cause gory cuts even from a glancing blow and were mostly used in the arena when slaves were forced to fight each other to the death. An especially lethal example of the gloves was called a ‘limb-stabber’ and was a thick leather glove with a pronged bronze fork fixed to it, effectively turning the glove into a punching knife.

  Two guards untied my hands and I felt the blood flow into them, tingling painfully as feeling was restored. I dabbed at my closed left eye, it was still swollen fast. I was without sandals in the snow, and my mutilated foot, legacy of a crazed Saxon warrior’s axe blow, looked blue with cold. I limped on it as convincingly as I could, drawing the Dacian’s attention to it. He grinned. I was going to be easier than he’d thought.

  As I wrapped my fists, noting that my cesti were leather with only a few metal studs in them, a centurion was laying out the rules of combat. “Anything is allowed except eye-gouging or biting,” he said. “The first to knock the other unconscious wins. Anyone who interferes with the fight will be punished. Go to it.”

  Someone tied off the leather thongs just below my elbows and I glanced to where the Dacian was adjusting his battle gloves. They seemed to have substantial metal plates across the knuckles and I caught the gleam of a blade between the fingers. The bastard’s cesti were much more lethal than the ones on my hands. I gripped the leather that lay transverse inside my fists. He probably had metal bars hidden in his palms. I was goi
ng to have to be more careful about exchanging blows.

  As I assessed my opponent’s stance, wondering about his footing in the rutted ice and slush, I saw he had tucked a small dagger into his sandal thongs above the ankle. Another thing to guard against, I thought.

  My dozen men, hands still bound, were herded to one side under the courtyard’s high wall, with three spear-carrying guards around them. The officer, centurion and the other three guards had watched my release and were waiting for the show. I glanced upwards. No sentries in sight on the wall above.

  The handlers stepped back and we were shuffling through the slush, circling each other. Back slightly bent, I thought, knees flexing through the stiffness, left forearm extended a little to protect the guts, right fist cocked. The Dacian whirled in swinging his iron-bound fists. I rocked backwards, felt a scrape across my forehead and a warm gush of blood where he’d cut me. He was fast.

  Keep circling, dash away the blood leaking into my right eye, watch his eyes, catch the blink he makes just before he moves, sway left, punch upwards hard. My fist connected with the hinge of his jaw, his head rocked backwards and he went down, cold. I half-stumbled over him, seeming to put down my left hand to steady myself, and slipped the dagger from its place at his ankle. It hid easily in my hand and I allowed myself, gasping dramatically, to be pulled to my feet by a couple of soldiers.

  Chapter XVIII - Ferrata

  Brandarke was undoubtedly out cold, mouth open, flat on his back in the slushy snow. The officer looked at me, disappointed that the fight had been so brief. I hung my head and shuffled a pace or two to one side as he leaned over Brandarke to confirm his condition. The legionaries were also gazing at their downed comrade.